Entry posted by Jean Valjean
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8 - Selina Kyle
What I like about Selina is that she's grounded. You'd think that since she wears a catsuit when ready for action that she'd be an action girl, and while she can often get her way out of tricky situations, she's not ridiculously good at fighting. Her skill set is dedicated more to the subtle art of cat burglary, which she pursues due to her own complicated Robin Hood reasons. Yet, in spite of her talent, she's not completely off the records. She needs a clean slate and has to risk quite a bit to get it, and unsuccessfully. It turns out that she can be caught by the police, and on top of that she knows when to be afraid, because Bane and his cronies are completely out of her league.
Contrast this to the typical action girl. Lately there was also someone named Natasha Romanov, also known as the Black Widow. She also wore a catsuit, although for some reason she unzipped it to display gratuitous cleavage. What gets at me with this character is that, as the action girl, she always has the upper hand, because no matter what she's skilled enough to fight herself out of even the most ridiculous situations, because at the end of the day she's the action girl and everyone else is just a thug. It's a very simple and blunt narrative, and I don't necessarily think that it's empowering to women. She's essentially a man's creation in a woman's suite, and there's no doubt that she was merely the product of the male imagination because I know male fantasies when I see them.
So Selina isn't really the action girl. I see her more as a skilled, elegant woman, with neither her talents nor her femininity turned into caricatures. The true virtues of being a woman, whatever they are, I am sure are far more complex than what most male authors can imagine. And it's true, because underneath I have the sense that she's far more intricate than Black Widow, who's blunt in comparison. This seems to me to be closer to a strong woman as women would imagine themselves.
At first I was against having her played by Anne Hathaway, bythaway (See what I did there?), but the more I thought about it the more I thought this was a dead-on choice, especially when paired with the older sense of fashion the character subtley embraces, which look very good on Anne. She has that very plain and traditional beauty that matched the type of character Selina was: human in her limits but still cunning and graceful.
As a side note, I had actually expected Nolan would cast Ellen Page as Selina, since I could have seen her playing the role and he had already brought up just about everybody else from Inception.
You know that slight romance between her and Batman? I totally ship it. She doesn't need romance, and it seems out of her character for her to care for Bruce, but that's what makes for a relationship, because a good relationship isn't necessarily something you need or something you're looking for. I just thought that her brand of femininity truly complemented Bruce Wayne's brand of masculinity. They don't share everything in common and are fairly different personalities, but they balance each other out, which while not completing each other (because they're already complete), it certainly completes the single unit that is their partnership.
So I'm glad that this character made it big in cinematic history. I'm sure she'll be helpful as an example when explaining certain philosophies about love and human nature.
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